Here is a mail I received from UD (sent to all members) :

As previously announced, the application used for this project will change from THINK to LigandFit by the end of June. This is only a change of application and does not affect the basic nature of the research being done. You will notice a change to your device profile. In the "Current Distributed Computing Projects" section of your device profile, we will be adding "United Devices Cancer Research Project, phase II" under "Primary Projects", so you will see two primary projects listed for a short time. In the coming weeks we will remove the "Intel-United Devices Cancer Research Project" from the list.

This does not change your control over the projects you run. You will always be told what projects are running and have the option to opt-out of a project.

Thank you for your support and participation.

Regards,
United Devices Member Services

And here is the UD July News letter about :
- System status
- An update on the cancer research project from the CEO

System Status

We upgraded to the 3.0 version of the MetaProcessor platform on June 17, 2002, and despite extensive testing, several problems were uncovered after the upgrade. At this time all problems have been diagnosed and fixed, or in some cases a temporary repair has been made while the permanent fix can be tested.

We know many of you experienced delays when connecting to the server, or were unable to connect at all. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We appreciate your continued patience and support for this project.

If you ever experience a problem with the UD Agent, please check the Known Issues section of the UD Forums. As problems are identified, they are listed here so you know it's being worked on and when it has been fixed.

Here are the current Known Issues: ( http://forum.ud.com/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum;f=2 )

- ISSUE: Windows 95 will give the following error when you try to start the UD Agent.
"Entry Point Not Found The Procedure Entry Point GetFileAttribuiteExA cound not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.DLL."The problem is associated with the latest version of the UD Agent, version 3.0 (2809), and the Kernel32.dll version in Windows 95, 95A, 95B (OSR2.1) and 95C(OSR2.5).
- UPDATE: There is no work-around available because there is no updated Kernel32.dll for Windows 95 that provides that function. United Devices ceased official testing and support for Windows 95 in version 2.1 of the Agent.

- ISSUE: A harmless open listening port on TCP/IP port 7879 is currently in place on some agents due to a migration issue. If you find your agent listening on port 7879 the problem will be fixed within a day. The server will correct the behavior and no update is needed or effort is required on your part. Please feel free to block the port if you are concerned with the behavior.
- UPDATE: The problem should be solved at this time.

- ISSUE: Some points and CPU time are mismatched between Web stats and the stats within the agent. Within the next 24 hours those numbers should sync up. No data has been lost; it is simply a display issue that is being corrected on the server end. This may mean that your points or CPU time may temporarily appear slightly lower or much greater than expected until these values resync.
- UPDATE: A fix has been applied. The next time your agent connects you should see the correct CPU time in your agent.

- ISSUE: On some computers, restarting from checkpoint is not reliable. We are investigating this problem and will release a correction for it as soon as we have one ready.
- UPDATE: Problem has been identified and a fix is in the works.

- ISSUE: Occasional issues with handing out work have caused some problems getting enough work to all hosts.
- UPDATE: The problem has been identified and we are testing several options at this time.

.................................................. .

An Update on the Cancer Research Project from the CEO

Thanks to the continued dedication of our project Members, the Intel-United Devices-NFCR Cancer Research project proved more successful then we could ever have anticipated. It was so successful that we will begin a second phase of the project shortly to continue this groundbreaking research. The first phase, using the THINK application to identify key "hits", is complete. The second phase will further refine these initial hits by running them through a different application called LigandFit.

United Devices is still working in partnership with the National Foundation for Cancer Research, Oxford University and Dr. Graham Richards. His team will continue to receive the results and work diligently to advance cancer research. During this transition time, Members will notice the new application running, evidenced by a new name and graphics. Otherwise, we are simply continuing the same research with the ultimate goal of finding more effective drugs with few side effects to fight cancer.

We would like to thank Keith Davies, author of THINK, for all his contributions to this project.

A word from Dr. Graham Richards on the science behind the project:
The screen saver project has been an enormous success. It has involved well over a million and a half personal computers in more than two hundred countries, yielding in excess of 200,000 years of CPU time. With such power it has proved possible to screen three and a half billion molecules against a range of cancer targets and, in a three week burst, against the anthrax toxin.

Now we can look to the future and use this incredible power to extend the project using computationally more demanding but more reliable methods. The THINK software has the virtue of incredible speed with a very light demand on data transfer. We now intend to use the more sophisticated LigandFit software, an improvement made possible by virtue of the power that the user community has made available. We believe that the scoring function, which indicates just how good hits are likely to be, is more accurate than the crude but fast methods used hitherto. Our obvious next step is to take the lists of hits generated so far and to run them by the newer software so as to generate a smaller list of more accurately generated hits, thus leading to a more tractable set of potential drugs to synthesize and test.

Happy crunching!

Best Regards,

Ed Hubbard
CEO & Founder
United Devices

I just had that new task called LIGANDFIT. The screen shows some kind mix of pills moving around.
It's good to see a change, I got bored watching the previous one. :p :p

posted July 01, 2002 15:58
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We are pushing a new Agent v3.0 (2814) and a new LigandFit binary. The LigandFit version number has not changed but code has changed. This update is to help reduce the size of uploaded result files for LigandFit. Files should properly be below 1Meg in size. We are still working to find a way to make the result files smaller than 1 meg but this should provide some relief at this time.

This upgrade will of course place more strain on the servers for a few days but we need to get the result size reduced as it is causing more load than is needed on the servers as well. It also puts unneeded strain on your own connections.

We thank everyone for hanging in there and working through this tough time. We are still working to increase server efficiency and will update you is if things change.

Thank You
paul

--------------------
Paul Gentle
moose@ud.com
United Devices
Senior Test Engineer


posted July 02, 2002 15:13
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The update of the Agent and LigandFit task application is going well. Servers are handing out work and files. We know some people are having trouble getting in and belive that to currently be due to the traffic associated with trying to get the agent upgrade. We are continuing to monitor the servers and watching for problems with connections. Our inbound result traffic has already started to reduce.

Thank You
paul

--------------------
Paul Gentle
moose@ud.com
United Devices
Senior Test Engineer

This would explain the latest connection problems.

Some more information about the new LigandFit version :

posted June 27, 2002 18:40
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Known Issues and General Info for LigandFit version NT_0.1.1 (2809)

General Info:

LigandFit starts by running an Energy Grid calculation.
LigandFit checkpoints after every Ligand.
When restarting from checkpoint LigandFit must run the energy grid calculation again.
LigandFit uses OpenGl to display graphics. All versions of Windows 98 and above ship with an OpenGL software dll. If you find yourself in need of an updated OpenGL dll check out http://www.opengl.org.
While graphics are displayed the UD.exe will use some CPU to perform the graphics. UD.exe will not take this extra cpu time if the LigandFit graphics are not displayed.
If you have minimal free RAM or VM no Graphics will be displayed, but instead a static graphics that looks like the banner at http://www.chem.ox.ac.uk/curecancer.html.
You Must have 32MB RAM minimum to participate.
LigandFit workunits can be up to 150K in size. Current workunits have 300 Ligands in each workunit.
The First resdata is 63K in size.
LigandFit results are larger than previous projects. Current expectations are in the range of 500K. Workunits are expected to be ~20 hours in length. We are working to find ways of making this a smaller upload.

Known Issues:

When restarting from a checkpoint the Ligand progress count will display 0 of 300 not the location you left off on. This will change once the next Ligand is reached. On the main page the percent complete and cpu time do start and show percent and time when restarting from checkpoint. We are working to fix this behavior so it shows the Ligand you left off on (ie 40 of 300.)
There is currently no display of the protein name or description. We are working to provide this.
Ligand 3D structure does not display Chlorine properly. It will show up grey like Carbon. This is only a display issue. A Fix in progress.
It is possible to detach the Task graphics screen. To correct Minimize the Task graphics window and the UD agent window. If you minimize the UD Agent before Minimizing the Task graphics it is possible to get a Run-time error '384' by clicking on other button in the Task Graphics Window. The agent will terminate when clearing the error window. Fix is in progress.
A pause when switching to task graphics screen exists. The switch to the task graphics is not instant and it can take a few seconds on a decent machine and a little longer on slower machines for the graphics page to display. We are looking for ways to continue to speed this up.



--------------------
Paul Gentle
moose@ud.com
United Devices
Senior Test Engineer